Shipping a Bike

I may truly be crazy. I spent a good deal of time lovingly packaging and boxing up the Prologue. I will be mailing this bike to Norway so I have wheels when I arrive. I almost think I should have packed up the other bike, since it has panniers and gears. It is doubtful that I’ll be commuting much in the next week- I am incredibly busy. What is truly crazy is that the Prologue was one man’s trash before its rescue and subsequent rehabilitation.

I borrowed a friend’s truck on Monday so I could pick up some boxes. I went to Freewheel and was basically told to dumpster dive in their recycling bin. I found several decent bike boxes for the three bikes that won’t have hard cases. I even found a few wheel boxes for my wheel collection. Last night, as I was packing the bike, I detected a nasty odor that I presumed was emanating from the cardboard- like there was an old food smell from some non-cardboard garbage that had been tossed in. It wasn’t until an hour later that I determined that it originated from the adhesive in the 3M packaging tape.

The boxes are all ready to go. I am shipping the wheels separately from the frameset. I’m sure postage will cost more than it cost be to build the bike. I managed to use a bunch of extra parts, so in all fairness, I could say the bike is worth more than the sum of its parts.